Learn how to handle negative messages

The workplace is often filled with negative messages whether its daunting news relating to your job or comments made from colleagues. No one likes to hear unhelpful remarks. Nonetheless, learning how to filter out what type of information to keep and what to let go of will help make your work more productive.

While positive comments reenergize your spirit, it’s the negative messages that create the drama at work. Negativity can be contagious and the saying “misery loves company” is often alive and well.

At work, no one is protected from negative feedback in fact the more responsibility given the more likely you will hear negative messages in the form of complaining or grumbling. The key is learning how to handle negativity in a way that doesn’t create doubt or defensiveness within you.

For many, the toughest hurdle isn’t the job search or the projects assigned at work, rather it’s working through the negative communication such as: “don’t rock the boat”, “we have already tried that in the past”, “you lack the right experience” or “your background is not the perfect fit.”

In any circumstance, the best way to handle negative messages that come your way is to stop and consider the source. Monitoring your reactions is half the battle when dealing with negativity and not every comment is worth the energy and time it takes to react.

During the times when you are the most vulnerable, practice catching yourself becoming defensive and slow down long enough to step back and calculate your reaction. People who really care about you give you constructive feedback with the intention of helping you grow versus those who are out to demotivate you.

One exercise designed to improve your responses to negative messages is to record a month’s worth of comments and how you dealt with them. Do you react quickly without thinking? Do you believe the negative comment? How are the negative comments affecting your career? On a scale of 1-10, how much importance does this person have over your life?

Once you stop and consider the source, albeit your boss’s comments are worth noting even if they are negative puts you in a better position to communicate and listen. You might discover you are spending way too much of your valuable time and energy defending messages from people who don’t really care about you.

It’s important to pay attention to feedback by keeping an open mind. Practice gathering information that makes you a better person or employee while at the same time letting go of negative messages that take you off course and into doubt.